Modelling Entrepreneurial Career Progressions: Concepts and Considerations

Abstract

Studying entrepreneurship longitudinally is in effect a study of entrepreneurial careers, but there is little vocational theory specific to self-employment, much less entrepreneurship. Using Edgar Schein's Career Anchor Theory as a starting point, the existing anchors of autonomy and entrepreneurship are adapted to facilitate secondary analysis using existing longitudinal datasets. A model of career progression or trajectory, which would permit analysis of the self-employed as well as others, is developed using six variables. The first three come from Schein's “career cone” model of vocational movement–-hierarchy, function, and centrality. Three new variables are derived from a diverse literature on entrepreneurship–-employment duration, job multiplicity, and self-employment emergence. One approach to the operationalization of these six variables Is shown using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and implications for future research and theorizing on entrepreneurial career progression are given.